Turner Prize winner Duncan Campbell presents new Irish film at IMMA this November

The work will be presented at IMMA this weekend and will run from 25 November 2016 – 7 May 2017. It is the artist's first new work since he won the Turner Prize back in 2014, when he became the first Irish person to do so.

The Welfare of Tomas Ó Hallissy is filmed in and around the Kerry village of Dún Chaoin and directly integrates newly scripted material shot with actors with footage from Paul Hockings and Mark McCarty’s 1968 documentary film The Village which was also set in Dún Chaoin.

Indeed this new film is set against a fictional visit by two American anthropologists to Dún Chaoin, mirroring the premise of Hockings and McCarty’s 1968 documentary. Campbell’s original material also echoes key scenes from documentary that captured the day to day routine of the village; the creamery, turf cutting, rabbit hunting and gatherings in the local pub. In revisiting these scenes, Campbell looks at some of the assumptions, ethics and misconceptions that frame the relationship between the filmmakers and the villagers.

As with many of Campbell’s works The Welfare of Tomás ó Hallissy questions the validity of documentary form as historical representation, blurring fact, and fiction, recording and interpretation. His extensive research into a specific time and context uncovers the unknown and unexpected in a representation of Ireland that at first seems familiar. On one level The Welfare of Tomás ó Hallissy represents the uses and misuses of the past as the implications of the societal shifts and misrepresentations it explores still resonate and inform contemporary Ireland today.